


better days

by tinydragon (tiny_dragon)



Series: every moon and blinking sun [3]
Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-06
Updated: 2017-03-06
Packaged: 2018-09-28 16:54:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10140284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tiny_dragon/pseuds/tinydragon
Summary: there are bad days and Will can't make them go away but he can make them hurt a tiny bit less.





	

There are bad days.

Sometimes, all Nico can dream about is Tartarus. He wakes up with the shadows slick against his skin, slimy and cold, like something dead.

Some days, he feels eyes upon him, never leaving. Everybody feels like a threat. Feels like even his own shadow is trying to run away, when it spreads out beneath his feet as the sun burns down.

Some days, Camp Half-Blood still doesn’t feel like home at all.

It’s different now, in the winter months. The majority of the campers have gone home, and Nico isn’t really used to having somewhere that’s a constant, somewhere he doesn’t fade into the darkness. It’s hard to do that here. The dark prevails in only small amounts, because even when night falls the place is lit up with bright colours and glimmering light, to make sure everybody finds their way back home.

Nico isn’t sure if he considers his cabin home, just yet. On better days, it feels like it could be. Home is where the heart is, and, well, he supposes that’s right here. It’s beating steadfast and slow underneath his shirt, inside his chest.

A lot of the people he loves are gone.

That makes it worse, sometimes. He misses Hazel, and he misses Jason, and Reyna. It’s a different kind of missing than he’s used to. He knows that they can all come back, knows that they will come back, in a matter of weeks or months, by the time summer comes back around again. Nico isn’t separated from them by great walls of life and death and shadow anymore. These are the people he can reach out, and touch, and pull back towards him. If he needed to.

The problem with Nico is he’s not very good at reaching out. Not on the bad days, like today, when he feels like something cold has slipped down inside of his chest, where the home is supposed to follow, and he feels like he wants to be alone but also, he’s painfully aware that this isn’t what he wants at all.

::

Will comes.

Of course Will comes. At first, he didn’t really get it, the way that Nico got sometimes, when the shadows held him down and he disappeared inside of the darkness. He couldn’t comprehend the pain of someone who’d been to Tartarus and back.

He still can’t. Will is a doctor, but he isn’t a saviour. He can try his best to heal, but he certainly isn’t here to carry Nico off away from the bad things into the sunshine and light. He could try; he doesn’t imagine Nico would let him, and even then, Will wouldn’t want to.

But he comes, because he knows Nico well enough to know where he goes on the dark days. When Nico doesn’t show up for breakfast for the second day in a row, Will makes his way over to the Hades cabin.

“Yeah?” Nico calls out, when Will knocks, instead of going to open the door. His voice carries through the thin walls, a little hoarse.

“It’s me,” Will says. “I want to see you. If you’re up for it.”

“Yeah,” Nico says, after a moment of contemplative silence.

Sometimes, the shadows squeeze their way out of the walls, and tell Nico to listen to the slimy things inside the back of his head, that tell him he’s not worth it, that tell him Will could never love him back. That tell him there’s a reason why everybody always, always leaves.

Well, not everybody.

Nico tells the shadows, and the voices too, to fuck off.

Will pushes the creaky door in, and immediately the pale daylight flocks into the room and bounces across the walls. Nico squints, and the door closes behind his boyfriend. And then, there’s a gentle weight on his mattress, and there are warm hands taking hold of his wrists.

“Hi,” Will breathes.

“Hey,” Nico manages. He smiles, a little bit. Hopes his skin isn’t too cold against Will’s fingertips.

“I was worried.”

“Don’t be. It’s just…”

“Bad day?” Will prompts, gently, when Nico takes a moment to find his voice.

“Yeah,” he croaks, as some kind of response. “I guess so, yeah.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Nico considers this. Sometimes, it does feel better to let the words spill out of his mouth. It makes them into real monsters, and then he can take his sword, and watch them crumble to dust and fall away until he’s safe again.

But sometimes he doesn’t really want to talk. There are ghosts in his head, sure – he’s their king, after all, and they cling to him. But for now, he thinks, he just wants quiet, and clean, no broken pieces of dust. And Will. He wants Will.

“Not right now,” he says. “Maybe later.”

“Okay,” Will nods. His hand finds Nico’s, and he threads their fingers together. Nico is reminded of children’s puzzles, with a couple of pieces missing. It’s frustrating to see the blank bits within the image, the tufts of carpet peeking out. But it’s still a pretty picture, even with the odd gap. Unless you look closely, you might not even notice.

They’re like that. They don’t fit together – they’re people, not puzzle pieces – but there’s something nice and homely and comforting, about the way that Will holds him, when Nico lets his head fall against his boyfriend, and Will keeps ahold of his hand while he breathes.

“Do you want me to go? Tell me if you want me to go. Or if you want anything, really.”

“I didn’t realise you’d taken on a new job as a personal servant, Solace,” Nico says dryly. “You sure you can handle it after infirmary duty? Very ambitious of you.”

Will swats him lightly. “Remind me never to be nice to you again.”

“Don’t be nice to me again.”

“Nico.”

Nico grins. Sometimes, when you feel like you’re splitting at the seams, the best thing is for somebody to look at you like you’re not, the way you want them to, instead of rushing around, pushing you back together and letting more threads fray.

“You’re welcome.”

Will rolls his eyes. But he squeezes Nico’s hand, too.

“So was that a no? To my question, I mean,” Will says, a moment later, when their conversation lapses, and light is still flitting into the cabin. Their shadows stick together.

“Yeah,” Nico says. “Stay. Please.”

“Okay,” Will agrees. He places a kiss, soft and chaste, a ghost touch, to Nico’s shoulder. “I’ll stay.”

There are bad days. There are days when Nico feels half thrust into Tartarus, still. A piece of him will always linger there. There are days when he feels more shadow than light, more ghost than boy, more memory than present day.  
Will is a doctor, not a saviour. He can’t make Nico better, and he wouldn’t pretend that he could.

But the bad days –

He helps make those better.

**Author's Note:**

> i am on tumblr at willsolaced, please come and be my friend and also give me ideas on things to write in the future


End file.
